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About the Photographer

Gest, Ben

American b.1975

For depicting routine activities in ordinary places, there is a tension in Ben Gest's pictures that is at first hard to explain. People clustered tightly together somehow fail to interact and seem somehow isolated. The photographer leaves subtle hints–-shifts in lighting, surfaces that don't quite align-–that suggest the construction of these scenes and help explain the disconnect between the people in them. Whether in a library, a bedroom, or a staircase, the subjects in Gest's photographs share the same place, but not at the same time. Shot at separate times on separate negatives, Gest stitches together his subjects in a single frame with the help of a computer, but their proximity is without intimacy.

Ben Gest was born in 1975 in Caldwell, New Jersey. He completed a BA in visual art from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1997) and an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago (2002). His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and LaSalle Bank, Chicago, among others, and has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; and Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago.